Conferences are often conducted with multiple participants. A conference will typically include a number of different speakers throughout the duration of the conference. When attending a conference in person, a participant has the luxury of utilizing sensory information, including vision and the timbre effect of sound, to determine helpful information about the speaker. Unfortunately, face-to-face conferences are not always possible due to geographical or other constraints. Therefore, many conferences occur over communication systems, such as telephone systems configured for conference calling, or video conference systems.
Many communication systems are limited to transmitting single channel audio signals between users. Therefore, when conferences occur over typical communication systems, spatial reference is often lost through the single channel communication. It is often difficult to determine which participant is speaking during a conference call when multiple participants sound similar or when there are a large number of participants on the conference call.
Conference calls may also be less desirable than in-person conferences for other reasons. For example, during in-person conferences a participant can direct his attention (or focus) to a speaker by turning his head, and thus receive sound from the speaker evenly through both ears. This “natural focusing” often allows a person to hear the speaker better, including times when other participants are talking.